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The former un educated Bus driver NICOLA MADURO must be removed by any Venezuelans : Any Venezuelan can take some constructive iniciatives do just that…get him fired or in Jail.[ over a million Venezuelans have fled their collapsing country in the last 12 months. Many of these are desperate people, sick and hungry. They will work for a hot meal. They are being exploited in prostitution and recruited for various crimes by organized crime.Isolated and broke, President Maduro has surrounded himself with many figures involved in criminal activity, and as long as he remains in power the criminal credentials of the government will get only stronger.“As Venezuelans, we have suffered for the past 20 years a progressive deterioration of our quality of life and now our country faces the worst humanitarian crisis in the history of the continent, forcing 5 millions people to emigrate because of hunger, morbidity, unemployment, the bankruptcy of productive companies, insecurity and the massive violation of human rights, crime, drug traficing ” it said.Venamerica blamed the crisis on “an ideological delirium that calls itself socialism of the 21st century. … In Venezuela, all institutions have been destroyed, the constitution has been violated and the … currency has disappeared.” there are no real police ]What is at the root of the crisis?Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves. When socialist President Hugo Chávez was in power, from 1999 until his death in 2013, he used oil money to finance social programmes.They transferred over one trillion dollars in secret accounts all over the world. Hugo Chavez daughter in one of the richest in the world. His children are hiding in many of the best areas of the world spending over a million a day. El Comercio reported in 2014 that opposition congressman Carlos Berrisbeitía claimed the daughters of Chavez and Maduro, were costing the Venezuelan state $3.6million a day.The $ 4,2 Billion lady daughter of Hugo Chavez Ambassador.The alleged fortune of María Gabriela Chávez, daughter of the late Hugo Chávez, has recently stirred up controversy in Venezuela. Media reports suggest that Chávez’s daughter has US$4.2 billion stored in bank accounts in the United States and Andorra, which might make her the wealthiest person in Venezuela.Critics have pointed to a supposed inconsistency: how can one support the so-called Bolivarian Revolution while enjoying such enormous riches? However, the premise of this critique is flawed, because it assumes that Chavismo emerged to uphold rights and equality.How did the Chavez family get so filthy rich? Did they create great industries and hire thousands of people? Did they contribute to the economy? They did it because they stole it in the name of income inequality:They are rich because the government has awarded them privileges and subsidies, at the expense of the average citizen. That’s 21st-century socialism’s social mobility. They don’t want capitalism, since their socialist system has already made them quite comfortable.They also do it because the Western media doesn't ask them about their wealth.For example, Raul Castro's daughter, Mariela, recently visited the US. She was given a total pass by US journalists who were fascinated by the Cuban health care system rather than Castro, Inc, the empire that has made her family fifthly rich too.Maria Gabriela in Caracas and Mariela in Havana, a couple of lucky girls who preach socialism and live like Maria Antoniette!As Hall & Oates sang many years ago:"You can rely on the old man's moneyYou can rely on the old man's money...."Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/07/meet_hugos_daughter_la_chica_rica.html#ixzz5LWs9LhAUFollow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on FacebookBut the opposition says much of the income was lost to mismanagement, patronage, and corruption.Critics accuse Mr Chavez's successor, President Nicolás Maduro, of using increasingly authoritarian tactics as the economy collapsed, prompting hundreds of thousands of people to flee abroad.Last year dozens of protesters were killed in clashes during protests against hyperinflation and food shortages.The UN Human Rights Office alleges that extra-judicial killings were carried out by officers involved with the Operations for the Liberation of the People, ostensibly a crime-reduction initiative.These officers may have killed more than 500 people since July 2015 as a way to showcase crime-reduction results, it says. They are alleged to have faked evidence to make it look as though the victims died in exchanges of fire.Where a coffee costs wads of banknotesWhy mums-to-be are fleeing VenezuelaUN investigators have been denied access to Venezuela. They made their findings from interviews with about 150 witnesses and victims contacted through "internet-based technologies", the report says.The USA do not belong anywhere in Venezuela and nobody wants them in Venezuela.First the big problem 100 % of the fiasco started as most of the Venezuelans voted for Chavez . Why should the USA intervene as everything is COMPLETELY run down with 70% of the medium & large business are seized, shut down or bankrupt. VENEZUELA REFINERIES CANNOT PRODUCE ENOUGH GAS & OIL FOR THE VENEZUELA PEOPLES.THERE IS MORE OIL IN GUAYANA NEXT DOOR;(WHO VOTES FOR CHAVISMO ? )(Class Voting in Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela )( Noam Lupu Princeton University )<In Venezuela, it seems that a broad coalition of the poor, the middle classes, and even some wealthy sectors, have supported Chávez at the ballot box. Only the very rich have opposed him disproportionately. Thus, I find no evidence for the claim that a disproportionate poor vote demanding radical redistribution accounts for the electoral success of Chávez in Venezuela.Clearly, we need a better understanding of the factors that led to the regional electoral success of leftist parties and leaders across the Latin region. But my evidence from Venezuela has shown that the role of factors like poverty should not be overstated.1- According to some observers, this leftward trend was due in large part to the region’s dramatic levels of poverty and inequality. Castañeda (2006, 29), for instance, asserts, “The combination of inequality and democracy tends to cause a movement to the left everywhere. . . . The impoverished masses vote for the type of policies that, they hope, will make them less poor.” But surprisingly little scholarly attention has been paid to the class bases that support Latin America’s leftist leaders. Particularly in the case of the populist left, it is often claimed that leaders like Chávez succeed at the polls by mobilizing and winning the votes of the poor (e.g., Canache 2004; Cannon 2008). Indeed, Seligson (2007, 91) finds that, across the region, “populist sentiment is significantly higher among the poorer and less educated.” The popular press also regularly cites the conventional wisdom that the poor elected Chávez; just months after his return to power, following a failed 2002 coup, The Economist (2002) noted that “the president’s support is concentrated among the poor.” Indeed, marches of Chávez supporters and opponents do appear to be divided along class lines (Ellner 2003). And Chávez’s own telegenic brand of nationalism and antioligarchic rhetoric foster this perception (Davila 2000; Hawkins 2003; Zúquete 2008). On the basis of these kinds of observations, Castañeda (2006) explains the regional rise of the left by the fact that a large share of the population in most Latin American countries is poor and has once again been charmed by populism. Scholars such as Roberts (2003a, 67) contend that “statistical analyses of survey data have confirmed that Chávez drew support disproportionately among the poor.” And this conclusion informs other interpretations of chavismo. Roberts’s (2003a, 2003b) assessment of the dramatic collapse of the Venezuelan party system in 1998 depends in part on the claim that an unorganized, largely informal, poor vote elected Chávez. He thus determines that “Chávez’s mobilization of lower-class support overwhelmed the capacity of elite sectors and the political establishment to craft a less threatening alternative” (Roberts 2003b, 66). Sylvia and Danopoulos (2003, 67) similarly conclude that Chávez’s appeal among the poor “proved unstoppable.” Others take Chávez’s support among the poor as evidence of the resurgence of Latin American populism and as a threat to democracy (Canache 2004; Davila 2000; Pereira Almao 1998). These conclusions are surprising, however, when one considers three equally conventional observations about Venezuelan—and more broadly, Latin American—politics. First, government support from the poor and working classes has appeared far from uniform during Chávez’s tenure in office. Iranzo and Richter (2005) and Ellner (2008), for instance, document Chávez’s many conflicts with the labor movement, which had close partronage p.511, 2/9/09 : 2/9/09 9:20:38 WHO VOTES FOR CHAVISMO?1-Patronage ties to the old two-party political system (Coppedge 1994). More recently, press reports have noted growing opposition to Chávez in crime ridden urban slums like Petare in Caracas (Ocando 2009). Second, it stands to reason that at least some of Chávez’s statist economic policies—such as public pension provision and utility regulation—benefited a larger swath of the Venezuelan population, not just the poor. Finally, scholars have long noted that prior Latin American populist leaders constructed cross-class electoral coalitions by combining targeted pro-poor policies with broader developmental and welfare programs (Conniff 1982; Roberts 1996; see also Lupu and Stokes 2009).2 Why, then, might class voting have nevertheless emerged in Chávez’s Venezuela? To date, scholars have answered this question in two ways. Some note that Venezuela’s poor suffered disproportionately from the neoliberal reforms and economic austerity measures of the 1990s, and therefore were particularly attracted to Chávez’s independence from the political establishment (Márquez 2003; Roberts 2003b). Others suggest that Venezuela’s poor voters have simply been charmed by Chávez’s highminded rhetoric, optimism, and charisma (Weyland 2003; Zúquete 2008).This article offers a simple but new explanation for the disjuncture between Chávez’s assumed dependence on poor voters and the foregoing observations that suggest otherwise. I argue that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Chávez in fact draws electoral support from across Venezuela’s socioeconomic classes. I find that only in his first election in 1998 was his voter base disproportionately poor. The conventionally noted class vote, when it exists at all, is the result of a disproportionally anti-Chávez vote among the very wealthiest Venezuelans. Although Chávez’s support base has consistently grown over the course of his tenure in office, it seems to have increased most among the middle classes, not the poor. And whatever effect Chávez may have had on overall voter turnout, it appears that his efforts have not led to a disproportionate mobilization of poor voters. Survey data from the three scheduled elections Chávez contested, in 1998, 2000, and 2006, and from the recall referendum of 2004 support these arguments.THE CONCEPT AND ANALYSIS OF CLASS VOTING The analyses presented here attempt to improve on previous efforts to take up the question of class voting in Venezuela by addressing both conceptual ambiguities and methodological shortcomings. Conceptually, scholars use the term class voting to refer to any relationship between them.2. One might also observe that Chávez’s economic policies during the first years of his administration followed largely orthodox lines (McCoy 2004). Moreover, there is considerable debate among economists about whether his policies have, in fact, improved living conditions for the poor (Rodríguez 2008; Weisbrot 2008). P5181.9 12/9/09 9:20:38 AM .10 Latin American Research Review cioeconomic class and vote choice, generally expecting the poor to vote for the ideological left and the rich for the right (Alford 1962).3 Few, however, explore the variety of forms this relationship can take, generally assuming (and testing for) one while disregarding all others.To clarify the concept, and to better specify my own analysis, I therefore suggest two distinctions that should be made in any examination of class voting. The first distinction is between what I call monotonic and nonmonotonic class voting (I use the general term monotonic for simplicity, but I refer here to strict rather than weak monotonicity). By monotonic class voting, I mean that the probability of a particular vote choice is monotonically increasing (or decreasing) with class. In the case of Venezuela, monotonic class voting would suggest that the poor are most likely to vote for Chávez, the middle class less likely to do so, and the rich least likely to do so. In other words, a graph of the relationship between class and vote choice would be a downward-sloping linear function. This conception of class voting is perhaps the most common (see, e.g., Lipset 1981; Przeworski 1985)—and it is certainly implicit in most studies of class voting in Venezuela—but it is not the only possible conception of class voting. The relationship between class and vote choice may in fact be nonmonotonic.That is, there may be a peak or trough in the graph. In this scenario, some class (or group of classes) votes differently than all the others, but the rest of the classes are indistinguishable from one another. Returning to our case, this might take the form of nonmonotonic poor support for Chávez. Under this scenario, we could expect the poor to be more likely than all other classes to vote for Chávez, while the middle class is no more or less likely to vote for him than are the rich. Alternatively, nonmonotonic class voting might take the form of rich opposition to Chávez, such that the rich are less likely than all other classes to vote for Chávez while the middle class and the poor are equally likely to cast their ballots for him. Thus, a study of class voting should examine both monotonic and nonmonotonic relationships between class and vote choice. Moreover, particularly in the context of low turnout, one must also distinguish between class-based differences in vote choice among voters and class-based differences within the broader population. Although most analyses of class voting focus exclusively on voters, doing so limits their inferences to those citizens who turn out on Election Day. Although this may be perfectly acceptable for some research agendas, one must be careful not to extrapolate inferences from the subset of voters to the larger population.43. Much of the research on class voting has focused on advanced industrial democracies.The scholarly conventional wisdom of a class vote for Chávez is largely based on two types of analyses. 5 The first relies on sets of correlations that show that Chávez won greater proportions of poor voters than he did wealthy ones. In her study, Canache (2004, 47) fi nds that, in 1998, “the urban poor provided Hugo Chávez with his earliest base of support.” Handelman (2000) also finds that Chávez drew support disproportionately from the young, the poor, and the politically unsophisticated (see also Cannon 2008; Heath 2009a, b; Hellinger 2003). Similarly, Hellinger (2005) finds that, in the 2004 recall referendum, those in the lower classes were far more likely to vote against the recall (72 percent of these respondents said that they intended to vote no on the recall) than were those in the upper class (28 percent of these respondents said that they intended to vote no). The problem with drawing meaningful inferences from these analyses is that they do not consider the role of antecedent variables. Simple could infer a description of political differences between classes in the broader (votingeligible) population. In the case of Venezuela, moreover, where turnout was near 90 percent until the 1990s, it would be difficult to label many abstainers “chronic.” 5. At least some journalistic versions of this conventional wisdom base their inferences on impressions of the types of individuals who participate in pro- and anti-Chávez demonstrations. As I show herein, this may simply result from projecting the opinions of a small group of the wealthiest Venezuelans—who do appear disproportionately opposed to Chávez and may also participate in anti-Chávez demonstrations—onto a broader grouping of middle- and upper-class voters. It may well be that class polarization exists with regard to these forms of political participation in Venezuela, and one could certainly examine political support for Chávez outside the ballot box; in this article, however, I limit my discussion and analysis to voting behavior. P5181.indb 11 5181.indb 2/9/09 9:20:39 AM 12 .Latin American Research Review correlations fail to account for factors that may contribute to vote choice and that are causally prior to household income, such as age or gender. If men are more likely than women both to have higher household incomes and to vote against Chávez, then the relationship between class and vote choice may be spurious. Other scholars have employed multiple regressions rather than simple ones and have arrived at somewhat conflicting results. Using the 1998 preelection survey (the same one I use in my analysis) and controlling for individual economic evaluations and policy positions, Weyland (2003, 836) concludes that Chávez’s voter base was “multiclass, as his backers hailed from all walks of life.” In contrast, Molina (2002) and Molina and Pérez Baralt (2004), controlling for factors like party identification and government evaluations, find a significant, negative relationship between class and voting for Chávez in the 2000 election. 6 Because they include in their specifications items such as economic evaluations and issue positions, these findings suffer from the opposite problem afflicting simple correlations. Class may, in part, shape some of these variables: this would be the case, for instance, if the poor were more likely to oppose privatization for fear of higher prices. If this is the case, then the analysis fails to test whether Chávez voters are disproportionately poor, because some of the effect of class will work indirectly through these intervening variables. To test the independent effect of class on vote choice, our analyses should include only those variables that are causally prior to class (Bartle 1998; Shanks and Miller 1990).7In my analyses, I therefore control only for antecedent factors like gender and age that, unlike issue positions and evaluations, are decidedly not caused by class. The second type of analysis used to corroborate the conventional wisdom of Chávez’s poor voter base is ecological. Combining electoral results with demographic data at the district level, scholars have observed that Chávez receives a greater share of the vote in poorer districts than in wealthier ones (López Maya 2003). On this basis, these authors infer that “majorities in the middle and high sectors tend to vote for any option opposed to Chávez, while the more popular sectors vote for him” (López Maya and Lander 2007, 17, my translation). But the difficulties of drawing meaningful inferences from simple ecological analyses are well known. Problems of aggregation and ecological fallacy mean that we need more 6. The authors note, however, that the effect of class on voting for Chávez does not appear to be particularly large.7. As Shanks and Miller (1990, 151) point out, “In order for a variable which operates at some distance from the vote to be important in a forward looking analysis, it need not have any independent influence at the point where actual vote decisions are made if all of its consequences involve intervening variables that are more proximate to the vote.” P5181, 2/9/09 9:20:39 AM WHO VOTES FOR CHAVISMO?13 sophisticated techniques before we can ascertain our confidence in these inferences (for an overview of these issues, see King 1997). Thus, by addressing precisely these issues, the analyses here attempt to improve—both conceptually and methodologically—on previous efforts to take up the question of class voting in Venezuela. By including antecedent control variables, I test whether class has an independent effect on vote choice in Venezuela. By including only those variables that are causally prior to class, I avoid drawing misleading inferences.CONCLUSIONSThe conventional wisdom about leaders like Chávez is that their electoral successes depend on class voting, particularly the support of poor voters disenchanted with the old political establishment, corruption within traditional parties, and the neoliberal policies of the Washington Consensus. There are, however, intuitive reasons to doubt this interpretation, including Chávez’s confl icts with organized labor, potential middleclass benefi ts from some of his economic policies and redistributive programs, and the scholarly contention that Latin American populist leaders generally rely on multiclass bases of support. My results show that this intuitive skepticism is indeed warranted; Chávez’s electoral base is not, in fact, disproportionately poor. That is, I find no evidence of a monotonic class vote outside the election of 1998.Only in his first election did Chávez garner a disproportionate share of poor voters, but this was not repeated in later elections. Instead, my results suggest that class voting in Venezuela is nonmonotonic: the very wealthiest voters are consistently less likely to support Chávez. This means that a type of class voting did emerge in Venezuela in 1998, but not one of the monotonic variety that most authors describe.In addition, I find no evidence that the poor have ever been more likely to vote for Chávez than to pursue either of their alternative options on Election Day—cast a ballot for the opposition or stay home. That is, even when monotonic class voting took place, as in 1998, it was limited to voters and did not extend to the broader population. Finally, my results show no support for the claim that Chávez disproportionately mobilized poor voters to turn out for him, as is often expected of a populist leader, although my evidence cannot be considered conclusive on this score. Seen in this light, Chávez’s multiclass base is similar to that of previous populist leaders in the region. He has maintained a nationalist, antioligarchic rhetoric perhaps aimed at the lower classes, along with propoor redistribution and, at least since the failed 2002 coup against him, a certain amount of clientelism (Penfold-Becerra 2007). At the same time, he has attracted middle-class voters, perhaps by pursuing some broader redistributive and statist developmental policies that benefited these sectors. Chávez’s 2006 campaign promise to nationalize utilities, for example, likely attracted middle-class voters who stood to gain from lower utility.My findings further suggest that some changes may have begun taking place in 2006. I find that both the poor and the rich were less likely than the middle sectors of the income distribution to vote for Chávez in that election. This result surely merits further inquiry. One possible explanation is that Chávez has found it difficult to target social benefits at Venezuela’s very poor, which may have alienated those who expected a much more radical form of redistribution.Another explanation might stress the increasing levels of crime in the country’s slums and the failure of the Chávez government to ensure citizens’ security. Finally, opposition parties may have made inroads among the poor by building local party organizations. Indeed, scattered opposition parties took over several mayoralties and governorships in the 2008 regional elections. If these parties successfully targeted poorer voters, this may explain Chávez’s growing reliance on middle-income sectors. It may also explain the increasing radicalization of his recent economic policies as an attempt to regain ground among poor voters. Indeed, since losing the 2007 referendum, Chávez has nationalized major companies in a variety of sectors. And given his success in the more recent referendum in 2009, these policies may well have paid off;Variables The dependent variable used throughout this article is vote choice, either intended or recalled depending on the timing of the survey. The independent variables are coded as follows: Income. Measured as a categorical variable with four values representing (a best approximation of) quartiles of the distribution of household income from each sample. Wealthiest. Dummy variable for the wealthiest respondents coded as follows: (1) respondents in the top 10–15 percentile (depending on the available survey categories) of household income in each sample, (0) all other respondents. Poor-Wealthy. Dummy variable for a combination of poor and wealthy respondents coded as follows:(1) for the poor and the rich categories,(0) for the two middle-income categories. Gender.0) Male, (1) female.Age. Measured as a categorical variable as follows: (0) 18–24, (1) 25–34, (2) 35–44, (3) 45–54, (4) 55 and older.<Education. Measured as a categorical variable as follows:(0) less than primary schooling completed,(1) primary schooling completed,(2) secondary schooling completed, (3) tertiary schooling completed.Venezuela is the largest exporter of Drugs (Cocaine, Heroin )in the Americas.Organized crime"Peace zones", seen in red, offered to gangs by the Bolivarian governmentThere was little history of organized crime in Venezuela until the start of the Bolivarian Revolution.The Bolivarian government was seen as being lenient on crime and justifying the criminals by saying they were poor and exploited.In 2013, the government negotiated with large criminal gangs on how to prevent violence and agreed to avoid policing gang territory in what were known as "peace zones", reinforcing criminal behaviors and making gang practices de facto law.According to InSight Crime, there are over a dozen mega-gangs in Venezuela, with some having up to 300 members.Due to the largely unofficial economy that exists in Venezuela in which nearly every citizen participates, organized crime thrived as smuggling has been assisted by Colombian gangs, the Bolivarian National Guard and government officials.[2]1-https://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/news/122120.pdf2-Crime in Venezuela | Wikiwand3-Tourist kidnappings and footie with severed heads: Inside the world’s most dangerous city4-The Upstream Oil and Gas Industry In Venezuela5-Opinion | Venezuela, the New Regional Crime Hub6-La situación de Venezuela en la agenda congresal7-How Hugo Chávez Blew Up Venezuela’s Oil Patch8-Venezuelan diaspora worried by Mexico’s new policy on Maduro9-Venezuela - BBC News10-Venezuelan forces killed hundreds - UN11-The richest woman in Venezuela is Hugo Chavez's daughter12-Meet Hugo's daughter (‘La chica rica’)